JEM content to be deposited automatically in PubMed Central

The Rockefeller University Press is pleased to announce that, as of December 2007, all of the content of the Journal of Experimental Medicine will be deposited in PubMed Central. The content will be mirrored on the UK PubMed Central website, and will be freely available to the public on both sites 6 months after the publication date. Our primary online host will continue to be HighWire Press at Stanford University, where JEM papers have been available to the public after 6 months since January 2001 (www.jem.org).

There are several advantages to posting our content on PubMed Central:

1. Compliance. The deposition represents de facto compliance with the request of the NIH (which may soon be a requirement), and the requirement of many other funding agencies, to make the research they fund free to the public after a short delay (1). We provide this service free of charge for our authors, who will not have to submit their work separately through the NIH Manuscript Submission System.

Delaying the release of content to the public provides subscription revenue needed to sustain the Journal. However, since July 2000, we have permitted (and encouraged) authors to post the final, published PDF version of their articles on their own websites immediately after publication. This includes institutional repositories.

2. Quality Control. Only the final, published version of JEM articles will be posted on PubMed Central. Content submitted independently by authors to PubMed Central has not been subjected to the text and data quality-control steps that are part of our production process. In addition, the existence of multiple versions of our content on the web, which can arise when authors have to submit independently to PubMed Central, could cause confusion about which one is the definitive version of an article.

3. Visibility. We want our content to be seen by as many readers as possible, and having it posted in its final format in multiple places will help to achieve that goal.

4. Archiving. As we work toward phasing out the printed version of the Journal, it is vital that the content is archived in its final format by multiple institutions, with various methods of assuring its longevity. In addition, posting multiple file types (currently XML and PDF) will help to ensure that the content is usable in the future.

We look forward to a long-standing partnership with PubMed Central in our continuing effort to provide the best possible service for our authors, readers, the scientific community, and the public.